


dust and light

by heartofstanding



Series: The House That Oropher Built [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Parent-Child Relationship, Second Kinslaying | Sack of Doriath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 05:06:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17781110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartofstanding/pseuds/heartofstanding
Summary: In the Havens of Sirion, Oropher takes stock of what led to the ruin of Doriath and how his young son, Thranduil, has been affected.





	dust and light

Oropher wakes in the early morning light, finds wife and child both gone from the bed. He starts, fingers scrambling over the rumpled sheets, seeking the warmth they left behind. Faint heat still lingers amongst the cool sheets and he forces his breath to calm. They can't be far. He will pick up his sword and his knives and his bow and he will find them. They can't be too far, he won't be too late, as he nearly once was.

He gets up, shoves open the door, fingers reaching for his weapons, and lets out a breath. The dawn's yellow light floods into the house, casting the shapes of his wife and son on the river banks into silhouette and shadow. He feels himself relaxing, relief almost a deluge that drowns him. His breath comes deep and true. They sit, the pair of them, on the muddy shores of the Sirion River, safe and unharmed. The sun makes his son's hair seem luminous, a white cloud illuminated by lightening.

Oropher leaves his sword and bow, takes only his knives, just in case, and makes the short journey from his doorstep to the banks.

'You worried me,' he says to his wife, 'When I woke and you were not there.'

'Thranduil was restless,' she says, her voice apologetic, and nods to their son, who is making a castle with deep caverns out of mud, his face solemn and serious, 'And you came home late last night. We did not wish to disturb you.'

'Eníril,' he says, so firmly that Thranduil looks up, face startled into a look of confusion and potential upset. Oropher ignores his son. 'I thought – I would rather be woken up than think the worst.'

Eníril nods, her fingers digging into the mud. She edges closer to the river, and he sees the way her hair hangs in a loose tangle down her back, feels his heart beat faster, brighter, flooding with warmth he thinks was once love. _Is love_ , he thinks – love is not beyond them now, not even in their circumstances.

'Círdan says we are protected here. He says the Havens are safe,' she says, and it's meant to reassure him, to be a balm to his worry, but he feels irritation swell in his belly.

'We were meant to be safe in Doriath,' he says, forcing the words out through gritted teeth. He thinks of them then, held safe by the girdle of Melian. They had a house built of stone amongst Menegroth and they would walk deep amongst the trees of Doriath without fear. They were safe, or so it seemed, until Thingol was murdered and Melian fled.

Thranduil looks up from his building, fingers and hands filthy with mud, 'Will we go back to Doriath, Father?' He frowns severely, the words carefully measured out but almost quick in his eagerness, and Oropher feels his heart begin to pain, the thought of dashing his son's cheerless hopes.

'Doriath is destroyed,' he says, 'We can never go back.'

Thranduil turns away, fingers digging deep in the mud, deepening the caverns of his castle. Eníril sends Oropher a look of plain disapproval, and he reaches out, easing Thranduil away from his castle and taking him within his arms.

Thranduil is so small, still not even twenty years old, and there is a perfection in his small stature that makes Oropher's heart ache. His eyes are bright, but wary, watchful, and his fingers and hands, filthy though they are, seem tiny against the front of Oropher's tunic. Oropher runs a hand down Thranduil's back and then draws his son closer, smoothing down the shock of silver-blond hair. When he had first been born, they had thought his hair might darken, turning from silver to a gold deep and beautiful – and rare.

Once, Oropher had thought he had seen the beginnings, but the hair remained stubbornly silver. At least the boy did not look out of place amongst his kin.

He turns his head to press his lips to the fragile peak of an ear, and feeling himself filled with treasonous hope, says, 'Give me a smile.'

Thranduil stares at him, blank-faced, and then turns his face away, tucking it against his father's shoulder. Eníril laughs, but even she can't hide the desperation and lost hope in her eyes.

'You didn't expect that would work, would you? Our son does not give his smiles away for nothing.'

Her fingers reach out, dip into the water, and he pretends not to see the glimmer of tears in her eyes nor feel the answering burn in his own. Their son will not smile, will not laugh. He has taken a grievous hurt in the ruin of Doriath that no healer can mend.

In Doriath, before the Nauglamír had come and before the dwarves and battles that followed that treacherous treasure, when Thranduil had been even younger and even smaller, he had been a happy child. It seems almost expected, to look back his child's youth and claim it so, but Thranduil had been filled with joy and laughter, curious and eager to explore the world around him. But only a fool would imagine that that happiness could escape unmarred from the destruction of Doriath.

Oropher thinks often of leaving the Havens of Sirion. He knows what was brought out of Doriath's ruins to this place and he knows that the Sons of Fëanor will come for it, and if there is to be a third kinslaying, what will save them? They could head east, cross the Ered Luin and make themselves a new home.

But Thranduil is too young, and the journey is long, without promise of a safe-haven. It would be better, Eníril would say, if Thranduil was allowed to settle and re-learn some of his old joy, to heal a little from the hurts life has dealt him.

He, Oropher, remembers holding Thranduil's trembling body during the Battle of the Thousand Caves, trying to brush the blood away from his face, calm his tears. Above all, he remembers the look on Thranduil's face when Oropher had found him, pressed into a corner with a dwarf bearing down on him. Oropher understood the danger, could feel himself already moving to defend his son, but all the time he thought of how _wrong_ it was, to see such fear, to see such terror on such a young face.

Yet Oropher had often pondered, in the dark watches of the night, the confusion and lingering betrayal he had seen on his son's face. The confusion he could put to one side – a child knew nothing of the horrors of the world unless they were thrust upon them. But he never understood the betrayal. It was, he thinks, the face of a child who thought the world his friend, only to be proved wrong in the most dreadful way.

Thranduil has not smiled, not laughed, since that day, and Oropher cannot be sure he ever will again, cannot be sure his son will ever heal from the wounds inflicted that day. Three years later, after all, what attempts at rebuilding and healing were destroyed by the Sons of Fëanor. They fled the ruin of their home and made a house of rough timber in the Havens of Sirion. They are bracing for another storm to destroy this new place.

Now, Thranduil squirms to be free of him, to go and play amongst the mud. Oropher lets him go. He had told Eníril of how he found Thranduil, told her what had happened – with his son in such a state, how could he hope to hide that something terrible had befallen them? But he had never told her that it had been Thranduil's face he saw when he killed the dwarf, and every dwarf after, in the battles that followed.

Where will they end up, Oropher thinks. He digs his toes into the mud, watches as his son pushes over the towers of his castle, fill in the caverns, lay it all flat. Eníril turns her face to the sun. He will do anything for them, anything to keep them safe, to keep them away from the people who have done them harm, but if new disasters, new foes come with the wind, what can he do?

They will have a home again, one day, and it will be their Menegroth, and they will lock the door when foes come, when darkness comes, and they will be safe. They will learn to put aside thoughts of gold and treasure when they see darkness and sickness lingering beneath the fair faces. He will love Eníril again, without thought, without question, and Thranduil will smile and laugh.

Thranduil scrapes the mud in a new pile and begins to form it into another castle, taller and fairer than the first. He doesn't smile.

**Author's Note:**

> What isn't clear in this, being that we see events through Oropher's point-of-view, is that the dwarf he sees "bearing down" on Thranduil was actually trying to protect Thranduil and get him to safety.


End file.
